Re, Eamon McCann's article in today's Belfast Telegraph and the "Alcohol versus Cannabis" debate within working class communities in the North of ireland....

I'm no advocate of cannabis use though by the same token it is possible for someone to die of alcohol poisoning on their first drinking session while no-one has ever died of cannabis poisoning/overdose. Yet, I have met many people who have some kind of mental health problem through their cannabis use/abuse though they are loath to admit it.

Longterm chronic cannabis abusers I have met tend to be a bit deluded, paranoid & sometimes clearly psychotic. Longterm alcohol abusers tend to be physically very sick & mentally ill, usually leading to premature morbidity a good 20-25 years before 'their time.'

McCann makes some good points but it should be borne in mind that Eamonn (perhap) enjoyed a smoke.......in the past during those radical days of student rebellion.

The prime reason why the British governent (& other governments) restrict, control or prohibit a certain substance/drug is primarily based on their inability to raise revenue on it ie make money from excise duty etc. Its a myth to think that every substance/drug is prohibited because the state knows it is bad for us or potentially dangerous. For instance, government legislation states that OTC (over the counter) combination analgesics with 500gs paracetamol (APAP in USA) can contain no more than 7.5mgs dihydrocodeine bitartrate or 12.5mgs codeine phosphate (usually called co-codamol here or panadeine in Australia) the stated reason being because of it's abuse potential. However, if someone really wants to harm themselves they can literally buy boxes of paracetamol from a pharmacy or even a corner shop & as little as 12 of those simple headache tablets can kill you in a very very painful way within 48hrs sometimes.

The problem with the cannabis versus alcohol debate within Irish working-class communities is that those who are most vocal are those who say either 'cannabis does me no harm' or 'alcohol does me no harm' - its very subjective. Because one individual can take a few drinks get merry, behave like a gentleman/lady does not mean another individual will behave similarily. Likewise with cannabis, some may take the odd smoke without any noticable problems while another individual may be sent on a longlasting whiteknuckle ride or become a chronic user or even suffer from permanent cannabis psychosis. I have seen CAT scans of habitual cannabis users and there can be real abnormality. Personally, I use neither so I can be a bit less emotionally involved and I can assure you that all things taken into consideration alcohol is by far the more deadlier drug, there is no question about that whatsoever.

However in the short term at least, Republicans are right to have a downer on drugsdealers in our areas because they are active criminals who will sell any substance that will turn a profit. If alcohol prohibition were introduced tomorrow these would be the guys selling booze at skyhigh prices or cooking up bathtub gin. The North of Ireland being far from a normal society, there is ample evidence that the authorities permit dealers to operate free from prosecution in return for providing intelligence on political 'dissidents' who are on their watchlists. Also, there is the widespread belief that similar to the FBI's attempt to negate the influence of the Black Panthers within the black ghettos in the USA by enabling the saturation of those areas with heroin in the 1970's, the explosion in the availability of certain narcotics in the North beginning in the early 1990's was very much state nurtured if not sponsored and in the same mode as the FBI's actions. There is also a real fear of the perceived 'gateway' potential of cannabis.

One things for sure, drugs dealers in our communities are predatory scum, unphased by our moral based enlightened debate, they only care about profits and unforunately within their niche their profits are directly linked in many cases to human misery. (Unfortunately, this could also be said to be true to a certain extent with eg, bookies and liquor store owners, the big difference being that their products are legal in this country - but that is part of another equally complex moral debate which we no doubt will cover at a later date.) Groups like CFAD (Concerned Families Against Drugs?) get my support because they are a community based response to a problem that effects our community. Furthermore, there are not a lot of agencies willing to tackle this problem at CFAD's level in the short term and for this reason their fortitude is to be commended. It is my understanding that CFAD have compassion for the young person who has been sucked into addiction by unscrupulous dealers but advocate that the community takes direct action such as picket the houses where drugs are being sold along the same lines as community groups did in Dublin in the recent past.

In the longterm the drugs issue will have to be addressed in a multi-facetted, objective fashion as it is too complex a problem to be solved with a blunt instrument. There can be no winners in the so-called war on drugs, it is a war which cannot realistically be won because there are far too many variables or 'fronts' not least being that it is a war against human biology because within capitalist society there will always be a need to temporarily escape reality and for some oblivion is preferred, unfortunately. Perhaps the most unsurmountable variable is the fact that narcotics are a multi-billion dollar industry and there simply will never be the resources or will to realistically take down something of that magnitude.

© Iskra, November 2009